Yes, I Link My Own Sausage!

In this tub is the extra meat I trimmed from the front legs of just one pig. This was destined to became ground pork. Much of the ground pork I made into sausage. This year I made four varieties of sausage: Mexican, Cajun, Italian, and Carpathian. I like to come up with clever mixtures of spices! After the meat is trimmed, it needs to be chilled down to a temperature that allows it to grind easily. I put it through the grinder twice to ensure that everything was well-mixed. Then, I mixed the spices in by hand. Some of this I kept as spiced sausage to make into patties. The rest I used to make brats. The sausage mixture was put through a stuffer which fed the ground meat into the casing. I then hand-linked the brats, and chilled them again so that they were easy to cut apart. I was fortunate that I had the assistance of my friend Angie in completing the sausage making! It is a very fun process when you are working with your sister-in-slaughter, laughing & telling stories!